Lawyers write, blog and are otherwise producers of words; they structure public life through legal discourse and integrate all issues that reinforce legal reasoning. Even if one is inclined not to justify the power of their words in the context of a democratic theory, one is hardly able to challenge its public acceptance. But semiotic analyses harden the question whether these emperors wear nothing but robes. That attitude intensifies where medicine becomes increasingly relevant for legal discourse, as becomes clear where (...) for instance US political viewpoints bring bioethical issues to the Courts. One major theme in today’s medicine pertains to identity in its psychological, philosophical and social dimensions. Identity thus becomes a groundbreaking semiotic issue in law and medicine; both discourses are particular important to the otherness of the other. A US criminal law case interests here (Harrington v. State of Iowa, 2003; cited as: 659N.W.2d 509). The case is decided with “information about what the person has stored in his brain”. A chain of signs is involved: from “brain-function” to “brain-storage” via “brain-scan” to “brain-fingerprint”, for which the case became famous. A long series of signs and meanings belong here to intertwined discourses. Central is a particular sign in each discourse: “brain” means brain scan, and “fingerprint” means law! The two display trading mechanisms, which determine the otherness of the other and the self! The chain of signs in the Harrington case shows inter-disciplinarity in law and inter-discursivity among law and medicine. The trading itself underlines the semiotic dimensions in cyberspace, in particular the semiotics of the virtual (Hayles, Kurzweil) and their effects on legal discourse. (shrink)

Peirce shows how he presupposes that a ‘most general science of semeiotic’ is entirely a matter of culture. Semiotics unfolds even beyond the debate on specific differences between nature and culture. The expression ‘semiotics of culture’ entails all components of a true pleonasm. Pierce finds his parallel in the philosophy of Hegel and both philosophers consider the close ties between expressiveness and consciousness as a specifically human, cultural and spiritual activity. That viewpoint leads not only to linguistic but also to (...) other expressive phenomena, among which the body. Faces are perhaps the most outstanding bodily carriers of expression, so that Peirce’s analyses of Thirdness relate to the human face, not as a natural but as a cultural datum, in particular an artifice. A face-to-face relationship is embedded in a regulative discourse rather than an ethical appeal or other metaphysical dimensions. Three cases show various degrees of artificiality with different semiotic implications: Tilda Swinton’s appearance at the recent 2008 Oscar ceremony, the body art of Orlan and the first 2005 facial transplant of Isabelle Dinoire. The three do not only show how the human face is an artifice, but also how realities can appear to be fictitious within patterns of semiotic nature. Any sign can be a correlative to a fictitious world! (shrink)

The Roberta Kevelson Seminar on Law and Semiotics is integrated in the regular program of a US Law School and student enrollment is honored with credit points. Hitherto, the study of Legal Semiotics has mainly been located outside the Law Schools in the US and the Faculties of Law in the EU. Two important questions within the more general theme of Legal Semiotics and Legal Education arose: (1) the program requirements in an education context, and (2) the attention and interests (...) of the students. This IJSL issue offers essays presented during the Round Table which closed the Seminar, provides some experience-based suggestions for a Seminar program and discusses how to deal with the pragmatic attitude of law students. It interests how those topics relate to legal and semiotic literature and how they focus globally important viewpoints, as can be concluded in the example of the legal semiotics of family structures. (shrink)

PREFACE Ubi bene, ibi patria. The proverb expresses an important feature of this book. 'Being somewhere' necessarily implies an orientation towards ...

THE STRUCTURALISTIC ENDEAVOUR. THE WORLD AS MUSICAL SCORE The recent decades of this century have witnessed unusually rapid and far- reaching changes in the ...

Taking the letter of the law literally would equal the death of our hopeand expectation that law and its practices of justice will createimproved social realities. This insight is, however, seldom formulatedin legal discourse. A more profound analysis shows how ``the literal'',taken as a legal expression, covers the management of law's semanticsrather than delivering the precise description of a state of affairs inlaw. This pertains in particular to the ``well informed citizen'' (A.Schutz). Can legal meanings that should enter and perhaps (...) change thecitizen's life sphere for the better, transcend the boundaries of legaldiscourse by means of appealing to a literal meaning? (shrink)

Faces challenge the sender-receiver model as the major scheme of thought for appropriately understanding interaction between human individuals. The openness and indeterminacy of faces lead to establish a semiotically relevant distinction between interaction and interactivity. The latter is our proposed articulation of the dynamic energy that thrives through the existence of signs and the uses of a semiotics. Facial expressions sustain and express the vital dynamism of making meaning in life. This often occurs at a bewildering distance to legal life (...) and discourses established by legal terminologies. (shrink)

A cluster of issues in the context of legaleducation shows the importance of legalsemiotics: new forms of citizenship, new ideas on e-education, the recent design ofe-educational programs that focus the featuresof institutional life, the concept of a`learning society' are this cluster's elements.Opinions of European Union Institutions stimulate to conceive modern society in thelight of these issues. It leads to theformulation of a fifth freedom in the Union,(after freedom of persons and goods, servicesand capital) which is the freedom toparticipate in a (...) ``learning society''. Thepractice of that freedom leads to developinge-educational programs for institutionalskills. (shrink)

High alert exists when the semiotic components of electronic communication are challenged to induce responsive citizenship. Evaluations of the uses of existing government websites are particularly important in that regard. They form a high tech network of data and communication efforts but do not contribute to the education of citizens. Do we dislike education when carried out by government? Governments seldom focus education as a force to change attitude and mentality of the citizenry. To educate means to create a difference (...) through an educated appreciation of others – a necessary condition for life in institutions, supported by citizens who themselves grew up in the Western hemisphere with its overemphasis on ego-directed national goals, values and interests. One observes how materials for an electronically enhanced education program, made available in government web sites, remain out of use. An education deficit must be mentioned, which in its turn underestimates the contribution to semiotics in law and politics, in particular where theoretical foundations of the virtual are at stake. (shrink)

The question of the philosophical basis of medical science and medical practice is considered under three closely related themes: (i) the doctor-patient relationship, (ii) the structure of the medical-ethical discourse, and (iii) the problem of philosophical founding in relation to medical conduct. The doctor-patient relationship is regarded as a transformational relation. Acceptance of the illness of the patient, the construction of a complaint as a necessary condition — and not a description of an existing reality — as well as the (...) establishment of a common interest are determinants of that relation. They are related to the dominant form of science and thought in medicine, namely application. This is typical for the Standard Medical-Ethical Discussion (SMED), its scope and its rationality. The third issue leads to the thesis that this particular rationality is not a sufficient ground for considering the medical discourse to be founded in philosophy. (shrink)

The close ties between law and psychiatric illness challenge our effort to understand the complex semantics of Western culture and the foundations of law in the heart of that culture. It is, however, difficult to be immediately confronted with the limitations of these semantics. Can one ever achieve a refined precision of psychiatric issues? Lawyers and psychiatrists tend to disregard the fact that people live within different realms of expressiveness, even where the same phenomena seem apparent. They neutralize all relativity (...) and design a quasi-universal body of legal doctrines or construct an all-embracing medical nosology. The question remains what practices of judgment are justifiable when the history books demonstrate the ever-changing character of the idea of a common good and a well-ordered life. Notions of relativity accompany decisions to punish or to cure, to exclude or to include, to disregard or to consider. In these decisions, there are never supracultural notions at hand and only rarely ideas that reach beyond the boundaries of either profession's own discourse. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 19-40.

Originally published in English in 1984, this collection of essays documents a dialogue between phenomenology and Marxism, with the contributors representing a cross-section from the two traditions. The theoretical and historical presuppositions of the phenomenology inaugurated by Husserl are very different from those of the much older Marxist tradition, yet, as these essays show, there are definite points of contact, communication and exchange between the two traditions.

Phenomenology and Marxism in historical perspective Fred Dallmayr (Notre Dame, Indiana) The topic of phenomenology and Marxism immediately confronts us with ...